Overall Satisfaction with Brandwatch

As a technology, travel, and news journalist, or a PR and marketing professional, I've utilized many tools to capture the relevance and value of social media over the years. At Pamil Visions Public Relations, and via our efforts at Argophilia and Argo Travel News, our people have found Brandwatch the premier tool for showing the statistical underbelly of the digital landscape. Whether we need to report to hotel clients on media mentions, or if I personally need to find a key metric for a news story, Brandwatch solves for "X" in most cases. The point of pain Brandwatch easily solves is turning intricate and complex social interaction, Big Data, and difficult to explain concepts into relative child's play. Brandwatch is a tool every business person interested in digital must have.

Brandwatch mitigates creating simple to understand answers from highly complex social metrics - face it, outputting a chart to explain social tone is just amazing

When I was asked to show the "heat" of mentions on the subject of the Ukraine for Russia Today, Brandwatch simplified the task of comparing the sentiment toward Russia's part, Ukraine, and the rest of the west. Social media plays a huge role in PR and politics these days.

A hotel recently asked us to show the ROI of PR, something public relations professionals have wrestled with for decades. Brandwatch helped me clearly represent how a "test" PR campaign resulted in a massive branding plus for a singled out hotel chain versus its competitors. I know of no other metrics driven tool that has been able to so easily accomplish this.

Frequently we're asked to evaluate one hotels chain's competition for their social and digital imminence. Businesses want to stay ahead of the competition, obviously. Brandwatch is the perfect comparative tool to help owners eclipse their competing hotels.

The only real weakness I can find in the Brandwatch tool set is the learning curve for super-wired company professionals like my team. That said, the complexities and uses of Brandwatch, while extensive, end up being far more feasible for uptake than the competitive ones. I'd also commend the team at Brandwatch for assisting at every level. I can't tell you how many times they've helped me create campaigns.

Brandwatch has helped us prove out our effectiveness better than any tool we've used. As for ROI? The cost becomes so minimal when compared to even the latest new business prospect "convinced" by using the tool. What I mean is, I've shown ROI to hotels using Brandwatch to convert believers.

One very good tool I'd like to mention is "Mention" a simplified digital metrics tool set. While not nearly as detailed or enterprise as Brandwatch, Mention does a great job of showing a social snapshot for business owners. Another wonderful tool we've used, Visible by Vocus is an extraordinary enterprise "listening" tool. We've a long and fruitful relationship with Vocus, and I've recommended their services many times. However powerful Visible is though, the aforementioned learning curve is steep. For businesses not as technically endowed, Brandwatch wins for simplicity and ease of uptake.

8 - We have eight people who are the primary Brandwatch users. Two of these are partners in our PR firm, two more are account executives, and the others use the platform for journalistic purposes, or for social media practices.

Brandwatch is good across the spectrum of "listening" capability, but we take advantage of filtering, data accuracy, and of real time capability the most. More often, we "ask" Brandwatch for instant snapshots of situations that exits when needed. This is powerful stuff as our business world gets more and more instantaneous. When everything is finally mobile, this will be even more critical for business.

As I've said, Brandwatch puts powerful metrics in the hands of all business, visualizations to deep analysis, it's all there when you need it. Of course there are always things that make a tool better, and the team there is actively pursuing better and better capability. Again, learning all the capability is the rub here.

Engagement wise, Brandwatch or any other suite of tools is going to be able to replace "direct" channel management. This is especially true for independent clients we represent. However cumbersome the tool may be for us to use, Brandwatch is also capable of what I'd call "peripheral engagement" for situational social tasks. Maybe this is just for me and my team though. Brandwatch has endeavored to install controls that help manage assets.

In general Brandwatch can be utilized by any business or organization to make a "window" into their digital ecosystem. That said, very small companies may be pressed for cost as is always the case. Those companies intent on growth, and on using the tools that promote it, are perfect candidates for Brandwatch.

Using Brandwatch

6 - Some of our staff use Brandwatch on a daily basis to track, strategize, and do brand management for clients. The more familiar we become with the platform, the more essential Brandwatch becomes for servicing our clients.